Ever heard of Duchamp’s Fountain, from 1917, one of the most famous works of art (some might say an icon of twentieth century art), which helped kick-start modern art? After the ‘readymade’ (signed under the pseudonym ‘R. Mutt’) had been scandalously rejected by the Society of Independent Artists (an organisation which prized itself on progressiveness), Duchamp penned a rather telling letter to his sister Suzanne, writing: ‘One of my female friends, under a masculine pseudonym Richard Mutt (or R. Mutt), sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture.’
